This week, the US government said it was “keeping all options on the table” with regard to whether it was going to send lethal military equipment to the Western-backed neo-Nazi Kiev regime.

In the same breath, Washington says it doesn’t want a proxy war with Russia and that it is giving priority to diplomatic means to resolve the nearly year-old conflict in Ukraine.

Don’t make us laugh to death. No one can possibly believe the weasel words that habitually come out of Washington. The American regime is by far the most destructive and deceptive international entity since the Second World War. Nothing it says can be taken with the remotest credibility.

Of course Washington wants a proxy war with Russia. It is in fact already fully engaged in a proxy war with Russia, with the puppet-regime it installed in Kiev last February serving as the vanguard force to destabilize Moscow. Whether Washington’s spin-doctors call it non-lethal or lethal, the reality is that the US is already propping up the Kiev junta to the hilt with military gear.

The Kiev regime, composed of self-professed Nazi-admirers, has been waging war on the ethnic Russian people of eastern Ukraine for the past 10 months, with over 5,000 mainly civilians killed so far.

Washington and its European orderlies in Berlin, London and Paris have Russian blood dripping all over their hands.

So, despite its beguiling lies and double-think, Washington is already knee-deep at war with Russia – albeit in a proxy guise to date. What the US authorities are now signaling is that they are preparing to move from a position of stealthy military involvement to one of open engagement – by publicly supplying lethal weaponry into Ukraine, along with US army and special forces “trainers.”

The New York Times and other Western media this week cited an array of present and former top US officials who are advocating the stepping up of military aid. These figures reportedly include Secretary of State John Kerry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey. Their views echo those of influential US think tanks, the Brookings Institute and the Atlantic Council, which are recommending $3 billion worth of heavy munitions to be sent on top of the inventories that have already been dispatched over the past year.

The move is being couched in the usual mendacious terms of “defensive” munitions in order to ward off “Russian aggression” allegedly in east Ukraine.

“Keeping all options on the table” is just Washington-speak for ramping up the military stakes against Russia.

The euphemistic phrase has a familiar ring. How many times has the US warned Iran that it is keeping all options on the table over the trumped-up nuclear dispute? In reference to Iran, this means the option of launching airstrikes on Iranian nuclear research and power stations, none of which have anything to do with constructing nuclear weapons.

Thus, Russia joins Iran and other nations that Washington threatens with the use of unilateral military force in order for it to achieve its objectives.

The use of military threat by any nation against another, without clear grounds of defensive justification, is a crime under international law and the United Nations Charter.

The same goes for the use of unilateral economic sanctions. Blockading other nations for political reasons is a war crime.

Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba are just some of the countries that Washington and its European satraps are waging a economic war on in the form of imposing illegal trade and financial embargoes.

The self-declared exceptional American nation is exceptional not for any presumed virtuous democratic or ethical quality (again, don’t make us laugh to death), but rather because it is an exceptionally rogue, criminal nation. No other state uses the “all options” veiled-threat-of-war or economic sabotage as routinely as the US.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the US “reserves the right to use all options” over Ukraine because “the US objective is to change the behavior of Russia.”

Forget spurious American claims that Russia has “annexed Crimea” or has “invaded” east Ukraine. After all these months, the Pentagon still cannot provide a scintilla of proof for its shrill claims against Russia, just like it couldn’t over Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction or Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons, or many for other rhetorical ruses invoked as pretexts for unilateral American military aggression.

The real point here is that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is refusing to “change its behavior” by not letting the US have its criminal way in Ukraine – by not acquiescing to the Washington-backed regime-change operation in that country. Putin knows that the ultimate US regime-change objective is not Ukraine, but Russia itself.

President Putin is not rolling over like a forlorn puppy (in the same way Britain, France and Germany do) at the imperious command of Uncle Sam. The tyrant in Washington is not getting his way over Ukraine and is not having his megalomania massaged by a subservient Russia. The insatiable and monstrous hegemonic demands of Washington are not being pandered to – and that is outrageously intolerable to the American tyrant.

Any nation that stands in the way of the American tyrant will sooner or later feel the vengeance of military threat and economic war.

Remember Guatemala, Chile, Grenada and Nicaragua among many, many others in the past.

But the current problem for American tyranny is that the world can see more than ever through its bombast and into its real, ugly nature. Its power is waning and more nations are finding the courage to stand up to its crazed hegemony. Iran and Cuba, among others, deserve immense credit for having resisted Washington’s criminality for so long.

This time, however, adding Russia to its hit list, Washington has fatally over-reached with its criminality and threats. All options on the table? This power-drunk tyrant is well and truly sliding under the table.

FC/HJL

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM

Columnist

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa working as a freelance columnist for Press TV and Strategic Culture Foundation (Moscow).